Cambridge Analytica’s Brittany Kaiser has been working for Ukraine

Her involvement has been so essential to the country’s fight for democracy that Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, told The Post his nation’s war effort wouldn’t have been the same without her. “Brittany has been a great friend — a great friend for me and for Ukraine,” he said in an interview, citing both Kaiser’s strategic game-planning and social media connections as the country has fought against the bloody invasion. “We’re really happy to have her.”

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To many familiar with Kaiser’s story, championing Ukraine’s cause might seem like an unexpected transformation. At Cambridge Analytica, Kaiser not only worked closely with Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon but also helped foster the company’s relationship with Kremlin-linked Russian energy firm Lukoil. But Kaiser says her new work fits with a redemption tale that started when she began leaking damning information about her former employer after it came under fire in 2018.

The news of Kaiser’s role in aiding Ukraine adds a fresh twist to a complex character-study of a millennial (she’s now in her mid-30s) who combines cutting-edge digital tools with old-fashioned political instincts. And it raises questions of how to process a world in which technology can so often scramble ideology.

More than 100,000 people around the world have used crypto to donate to Ukraine’s war effort in a kind of grass-roots corollary to foreign-government aid. Ukrainian officials estimate that at least $100 million has come into its coffers, with tens of millions more pouring into NGOs such as Come Back Alive, which was started to benefit pro-Ukrainian fighters in the country’s east. The funds have enabled Ukraine’s purchase of everything from medical supplies to food to bulletproof vests.

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Kaiser has landed in the middle of this story after a long odyssey.

Back during the 2016 presidential election campaign season, Cambridge Analytica — with the help of Facebook — improperly collected data on tens of millions of people so it could target “persuadables” in swing states with a barrage of ads. Many pundits believe the gambit got Trump elected.

Central to the effort was Kaiser, who in 2015 began working for the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica and its parent company, SCL, securing numerous key partnerships. She gained a measure of fame as the scandal began to boil over in 2018, testifying at a parliamentary inquiry in the United Kingdom, releasing documents and positioning herself as a whistleblower. (Cambridge Analytica was also retained by Brexit’s Leave movement that led to the United Kingdom’s exist from the European Union.)

Her celebrity received a boost from the 2019 Netflix documentary “The Great Hack,” in which Kaiser came off as a kind of fraught hero seeking to atone for her privacy-invading sins. Kaiser also published a whistleblowing memoir, “Targeted,” and started an organization, Own Your Data, that advocates for citizens’ reclaiming their data from invasive exploiters.

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In the past few years, Kaiser also has remade herself as an advocate for crypto, the tech-based monetary system that some people believe can be a democratizing political force. Kaiser has advised Wyoming lawmakers on a set of crypto-friendly laws and worked on the presidential campaign of Brock Pierce, the child actor-turned-crypto millionaire who made a statement run in 2020. He is now running for the U.S. Senate as an independent in Vermont.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Kaiser jumped right into the scrum. She negotiated with former global soccer star David Beckham for him to promote crypto donations on his social media accounts.

She pushed for more cryptocurrencies to be accepted by the Ukrainian government (some 15 now are).

She also worked with Gavin Wood — the crypto-tech pioneer who helped found the blockchain ethereum — to facilitate his donation of millions in the Polkadot currency he created, and recruited further donors within the so-called “Polkadot community.” To do this, Kaiser used what amounts to both a back-channel charm offensive and rallying public tweets. Crypto fundraising is much like the real-world kind — the skill lies in knowing where to look (and whom to thank). Wood did not reply to a request…